THE Conservatives triumphed in Buckinghamshire at both the general election and the county council elections, in spite of the party's disastrous showing to Labour in the rest of the country.

All the five parliamentary seats in new Buckinghamshire (minus Milton Keynes) remained True Blue. Four sitting members David Lidington in Aylesbury, Cheryl Gillan in Chesham and Amersham, Dominic Grieve in Beaconsfield, and John Bercow in Buckingham kept their seats comfortably.

And in Wycombe, the new Conservative candidate, Paul Goodman, increased Sir Ray Whitney's majority in 1997 to more than 3,000, even though there had been a scare for him on election night that Labour would sneak it.

In nearby Henley, formerly held by Tory giant Michael Heseltine, another larger-than-life character took on his mantle. Boris Johnson, best known to many for his appearance on BBC TV's comedy programme Have I Got News For You, became the new Conservative MP there.

Both Mr Johnson and Mr Goodman are journalists; Mr Goodman as leader writer for for the Daily Telegraph and Mr Johnson as editor of The Spectator.

After the election results were announced early on Friday morning, Mr Goodman declared himself a backer of One Nation Conservatism and said his first job would be to be a constituency MP, serving everyone in the area regardless of who they were or what their background was.

"Fighting an election is a bit like climbing a mountain," he said.

"When you reach the top, there is another mountain to climb, ahead."

Mrs Gillan had always been quietly confident that she would win and said that everyone had worked hard. Mr Grieve said, under the circumstances, he was pleased with his result. "It is a great privilege to represent Beaconsfield, " he added.

At County Hall in Aylesbury, the Conservatives increased their seat stranglehold by two.

They took three from the Lib Dems and the only Independent, but lost two to the Lib Dems.

The make-up of the county council is now, Tories 40, Labour five, Lib Dems, nine.

Afterwards, Tory leader David Shakespeare said of the victory against the national trend: "It shows that the Tories locally are doing something right that the national government isn't doing.

"We are responding to what people actually want."

Asked if he thought the majority was too big, he said that when he had first joined the council there had been 70 Conservatives.

The sole other member was Labour.

He added that he hoped the 14 newly-elected Conservative councillors would make a big contribution.